Businesses are facing increasing bandwidth requirements and a need for consistent uptime. As demonstrated by the results of a recent Nexans study, the growing demand for bandwidth is a key concern for data center managers, with more than a quarter of respondents stating that the increasing volume of data in their organization is driving the need for greater bandwidth.
Network and data center administrators are acting quickly, with 36% of those surveyed planning to increase bandwidth on their data center uplinks within the next two years, and 65% indicating that infrastructure changes will be made within the next five years.
In the business environment, the rate of increase is expected to be slower, but even in the office, more than 50% of respondents believe their existing trunk lines will become a bottleneck within five years.
More than half of the respondents in the bandwidth study believe that using a combination of copper and fiber is the safest way to future-proof a data center. “Organizations need an optimal solution with fiber in the backbone and copper in the network. This will deliver the most efficient infrastructure, providing the necessary longevity for a data center that should now last 15 to 20 years,” said Harry Forbes, CTO of Nexans Cabling Solutions.
Furthermore, Harry Forbes adds: “Companies need to choose high-quality cabling that can offer easy and efficient migration paths for the anticipated bandwidths of 40G and even 100G. The transition to 40G is likely to come very quickly after 10G, and as the results of our study demonstrate, network and data center administrators are already making plans to ensure their networks have a comprehensive cabling solution ready to meet these demands.”
